Outlook, Microsoft 365 seeing ‘improvements’ amid global outage
· Toronto Sun
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Microsoft says it is making progress as it works to fix a massive global outage affecting its workplace platforms, including Outlook and Teams.
The issue began around 12 p.m. ET on Thursday, disrupting communication services for companies, banks, governments, health services, railways, police services, court systems and tens of millions of users across the world.
The outage was first reported by Microsoft 365 users in the Americas before it “reached 74 countries and territories in about an hour,” according to Downdetector.
While many scrambled to find workarounds, other workers were relieved for the workday interruption and left wondering how they ever existed before emails and instant messaging.
The outage was not caused by a cybersecurity breach or “malicious activity,” Microsoft said.
Making headway
“We’re continuing to see improvements in service availability,” the company said in an update on X shortly after 9 a.m. ET, noting that while some emails are “approaching normal levels,” some users may still experience delays receiving or sending emails.
“We’ve implemented additional mitigation measures, are restoring remaining affected infrastructure, and are investigating residual service issues while closely monitoring service health and validating recovery across affected connection methods,” Microsoft detailed.
The tech giant previously said it was seeing “continued recovery progress” in the affected countries, notably “broader improvements in North America, sustained improvements across much of Europe, and encouraging recovery signals in Asia Pacific.”
We’re continuing to see improvements in service availability, with email queues significantly reduced and approaching normal levels. Some users may still experience intermittent access issues or delayed email delivery as recovery continues. We’ve implemented additional mitigation…
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) November 13, 2026
Problem caused by server failure
In an update on X on Thursday afternoon, Microsoft said it determined that it wasn’t an elevated load that drove an increase in traffic that was the issue but, rather, “a number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable,” resulting in a strain of the remaining infrastructure.
By early Thursday evening at around 6 p.m., Microsoft updated that it was “returning a portion of affected servers to the service, and they remain stable so far.”
However, the problems continued into Friday.
Toronto hospitals, VIA Rail affected
During the outage, Unity Health Toronto — the health-care network that includes St. Michael’s Hospital and St. Joseph’s Health Centre — declared a Code Grey, which is called when there is a loss or failure of infrastructure.
A message posted on Unity Health’s website said its teams were experiencing difficulties sending and receiving emails.
“If you are a patient and need to reach a clinic or department regarding an upcoming appointment, please call them via the main hospital line (if urgent) or wait until email services are restored,” it said.
“Please be advised that patient and resident care is not affected by the outage. Our hospitals remain safe and open to provide care.”
Via Rail took to X to alert passengers that they might not be able to receive emails regarding their trips.
It encouraged them to use the train tracker on its website or to subscribe to SMS notifications to get the most up-to-date information about their train.
—With additional reporting by Ling Hui